What am I supposed to do?

You ask yourself, “What am I supposed to do?” You head up a group. You should know. You’ve read job descriptions about this job. Heck, you may even have a job description on your phone or posted to a wall so you can refer to it often.

That lingering question persists, “What am I supposed to do?” What are those activities that are not in the job description but you know exist.

How do you find out the job description behind the job description?

There are ways to know the answer the question, “what am I supposed to do?”

The answer is not always easy to uncover. The answer depends heavily on whether you are a good listener, are aligned with whom you are accountable, can see what the alignment looks like, and whether you care to be aligned.

It also depends on whether you want to understand and have the aptitude to understand your staff’s and colleague’s values, motivations, learning and communication preferences.

Did you get all that?

As you move up the leadership ladder, “What am I supposed to do?” becomes more important. It is more about understanding and working with those around you than about the operational and business skills that you’ve developed. They are not exclusive.

“What am I supposed to do?”

1. Know yourself well. Accept your strengths and weaknesses. Know your values. Get aligned.
2. Articulate these and communicate them often.
3. Set out a vision of what could be, what you want to be, what you want the organization to be.
4. Communicate it often.
5. Set out crisp, specific, aligned, measurable, written goals with deadlines. Not the action plans.
6. Communication these clearly and often. Set expectations. Assign goals.
7. Hold people accountable.
8. Track results.
9. Stay out of the way unless you are needed and know when you are needed.

But before you can effectively do any those things you will have to some personal homework.

Listen and ask open ended questions continually. Listen most of the time, talk less.

Understand your values clearly and be 100% certain about them. Take an assessment if you need to.

Know your behavior patterns, reaction patterns, and the triggers.

Be clear about your thinking patterns both how you think about yourself (internally) and how you think about the world around you (externally).

Clarify your strengths and weaknesses and blind spots.

Adopt continuous improvement of yourself.

That’s it!

It’s not rocket science, but few rarely do this. You can.

Some people opt for a business coach to help. This will certainly cut the time you spend learning and provide someone to hold you accountable to improve and keep you on track.

What Clients Say

“After working with Phil, from just one process we cleaned up, we reduced mistakes by 70% and are stacking up cost savings.” —Stan, Construction Business Owner.

“Going through the decision framework helped make a very big decision that was stressing me out. After the decision, I felt a huge sense of relief and our revenue jumped due to better focus.” —Jon, Software Construction Business Owner

“We’ve improved our sales per FTE by 30% once we clarified the gap through the SMART goals and I’m not yet done with Phil’s program!” —Tim, Business Owner

“I recommend that if you want to increase effectiveness, sit down with Phil.” —Michelle, small business owner